Did I know that? I try and remember if we went over wherehelived in between…everything. “Oh, right.” I take my soft serve and turn to him. “Running?”
“Yeah,” he says, still catching his breath. “And then the soft serve beckoned. Also, I saw your bike.”
“Oh.” I digest that. Ellis always shows up in ways both serendipitous and intentional.
“Hey, congrats on the Gemma Flores stuff,” he says, as if he’d been meaning to tell me for ages. “Your social media is blowing up.”
He’s still following O&O? Oof. I smile through the pang. “Thanks, we’re blown away by the response.”
“It’s awesome,” he says.
I’m basking in that when I realize something. “Why aren’t you at work?”
“I took a personal day. The weather was too nice to be chained to my computer.”
I go where the wind takes me. And of course the wind pushed him toward me, the one day I decide to break out of my work calendar.
“It’s really gorgeous out,” I say. And then I’m self-conscious about talking about the damn weather, as if I’ve never been naked with this man before. After he puts in his order, I ask, “Uh, would you want to sit with me outside?”
I expect him to say he has to be on his way, but obviously neither of us are going anywhere with ice cream in our hands so he says sure.
We sit outside at the table and chairs set up on the sidewalk. The sun feels good while I take cold bites of soft serve.
“How have you been?” I ask, trying to sound casual.
He nods. “Good.” Monosyllabic and even. Giving away absolutely nothing.
“Great,” I say, painfully aware of how trapped we feel right now. “It’s good to see you.”
Ellis puts on his sunglasses, which feels like a self-defense move. “Yeah. Is, uh, is Mica’s arm okay?”
Right. That was the last time we saw each other. “Yes! Healed great, superstar at school. Remember how cool it was to have stitches when you were little? Or like a cast?”
“I never had them,” he says.
“What! How is that possible? You’re a”—I wave my spoon in his general vicinity—“a boy!”
Finally, he cracks a smile. “Yeah, I am a boy. But somehow I managed to avoid big injuries.”
“I’m a type A perfectionist who was raised by a billion Korean women and somehow still managed a couple broken bones and some stitches.”
His eyebrows raise. “That’s because you’re not really.”
“Not really what?” I say with a laugh.
“Type A. Perfectionist.”
It’s so matter-of-fact that I almost just accept it. But then I straighten in my seat. “Wait a second. Yes, I am.”
He crosses his arms. “You think you are. That’s what you aspire to. But deep down, you’re chaotic, too.”
Something about the way he says it gets under my skin. It’s too assured. “Literally no one has ever called me chaotic.”
He shrugs. “Okay.”
That shrug bothers me. “Every personality test in the world pegs me as type A!”
“You’re…a Gemini, correct?”
